mad in pursuit journal

DISPATCHED FROM THE CROSSROADS, AT THE intersection OF passion & obsession

My
weekend was pretty much spent glued to my chair working on the
Chakra Flash presentation. Did I find my groove — or
merely sink into a pleasant obsessional loop? I asked myself this
question when I got out of bed at midnight to write down some notes.
Why all the time?

Learning curve. Flash is so hard and so full of new ways
of thinking that it requires a huge swath of time to get it into
your bones. This justifies days at a time of learning. Luckily,
I haven't encountered any big frustrations to derail me.

Project complexity. As soon as one component of the "slide
show" is complete, I think of an enhancement. Yesterday afternoon
I was adding 8-second sound clips to each of the main slides.

Chakras as
universal framework. I wouldn't be putting
this much work into an ordinary corporate slide show. And I'd get
impatient with something that was too shallow New Age-y. But I
do get enthralled by the centuries of Tantric philosophy behind
visualizing these energy centers along the spine.

Last night I made the mistake of trying to fall asleep to a guided meditation
on chakras. Instead of putting me to sleep, I wound up jumping
out of bed to jot down some new connections I made. I
see now that chakras themselves are not the universal framework, but the
fit our universal need to organize the world into hierarchies, continuums,
and hero journeys. The Circle of Life. I wound up pulling out my
Joseph Campbell book "Hero With A Thousand Faces." This book is
about as close to a Bible as I get — Campbell's descriptions of the
commonalities in all cultural myths are always good for browsing
and inspiration.